Broken (Book 3 of The Guardian Interviews)

by Michael Clary

  The applause was back louder than ever, and just like that, my husband was back. He nodded his head in understanding. When he saw what must have been a very worried look on my face he even managed to give me a small smile.

  “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not,” the President continued. “But you’ve made quite a few friends throughout your journey. Perhaps it’s time for you to get reacquainted.”

  The lights in the ceiling dimmed, and the hall grew dark. After a brief pause, a single spotlight blazed down from the ceiling onto a little girl sitting on a stool with a large guitar in her lap. There was a microphone in front of her, and when the audience had quieted down she began to sing.

  “That’s Mona,” Ivana whispered.

  I nodded my head that I understood. I had never met the little girl before but I had certainly heard about her. I’m not sure if you know this or not but that brave girl stood up and sang Jaxon a song before some sort of fight.

  “Yes. I’ve heard about her. What song did she sing for him at the banquet?”

  She sang “True Colors” by Cyndi Lauper, and my God she did it justice. That little girl can belt out a tune. Her voice was just so pure, and far, far beyond her years. It reached out and caressed each and every person in the room. I struggled to hold back the tears. I really did, but then I saw Ivana. She was wiping her eyes, and her bottom lip was quivering.

  I began bawling right along with her.

  I looked at the stage. Jaxon’s eyes were wet but he had somehow maintained his composure. The same can’t be said for the rest of the team. They were just as bad as Ivana. Nick was even worse.

  There’s a part in the song which goes, “If this world makes you crazy, and you’ve taken all you can bear. You call me up, because you know I’ll be there.” Well, when Mona hit that part she stood up from her stool, and really kicked it in. Her voice suddenly became a thousand times more powerful and what sounded like hundreds of other voices joined in with hers.

  The doors at the back of the room opened widely and Father Monarez strode proudly through it with a candle in his hands. He was followed by others, many, many others, at least three hundred people. They had candles as well, and the light bathed the room in a soft glow. The crowd of people flowed between the tables until the room was full.

  All of them were singing.

  I saw Jaxon wipe his eye. When the song ended the people began to hum softly as Mona continued to strum her guitar.

  “We weren’t really expecting such a turnout,” the President said into the microphone on the podium. “In the beginning, we asked just a few people to come and say a few things about you. Word, however, began to grow. The White House was flooded with calls. These are the people whose lives you have managed to touch. Some of them have traveled very far to honor you. The least we could do was to make it possible.”

  Mona began to sing again. I can’t remember if she started the song over or repeated the second verse. I’m not sure. Everyone in the banquet hall joined in with her, and it was no longer just the people holding candles that were singing. We all stood up once again and sang along.

  My voice was cracking, but I didn’t care. I wanted to honor my husband and the team. It was that first time that I truly began to understand the scope of what he did. All the people inside the hall had been touched by him in some way, shape or form.

  If he saved the life of just one little girl, well, that little girl has parents. She has grandparents. She has brothers and sisters. She has cousins and aunts and uncles. Someday she would have children, and she would tell them how the General saved her. It was a sobering experience for me.

  When the song ended, Jaxon and the boys walked outside to where an entire area had been prepared for the party. There were heat lamps, tables, a bar, a dance floor, and a band that was ready to play.

  “Who planned all this?” I asked Ivana.

  She shook her head and raised her arms to let me know she had no idea. Imagine my surprise when the First Lady gently touched my arm and offered her hand.

  “My husband planned a lot of it,” she said. “He just wanted to honor your husband without standing upon the usual ceremony. I hope its okay?”

  “It’s more than okay,” I grinned. “It’s incredible.”

  Everyone grew quiet and began to gather around the General. He looked out over the crowd for a long while. I could tell he recognized more than a few faces. He struggled to say something. He couldn’t find the words. The crowd of people saved him the effort as one by one they all crossed their right arms across their chests and held a fist over their heart.

  It was the standard salute people gave him. Jaxon acknowledged it and returned the gesture. Then the crowd erupted into cheers.

  “Let’s dance!” Javie shouted with glee when the cheers had begun to die down. The band heard their cue and began playing immediately.

  “All those people must have been a nightmare for the President’s security detail.”

  I’m sure they were, but the President hung in there rather courageously. Eventually, something important came up, and his people rushed him out of the building. An hour or so before that happened, however, he managed to pull Jax aside and have a talk with him.

  “I’ve talked to my advisors,” the President said. “They want to blow El Paso off the map. At this point, I very much agree with them, but I’ve also talked to Mr. Hardin. He believes that that’s the worst possible thing that could be done. What do you think? Can the city be saved?”

  “Yes,” Jaxon answered calmly. “I’ll clear the city.”

  “Do you think you can do it before a mass of those things tries to escape?”

  “I don’t have much choice in the matter,” Jaxon said.

  “Okay son,” the President said. “I’ll take that under advisement. When do you go back?”

  “The day after tomorrow,” Jaxon answered.

  “Be safe,” the President said before returning to his wife.

  Jaxon merely smiled in response.

  “So Jaxon advised the President?”

  I doubt my husband would see it that way. In his mind, he simply answered a question.

  “There must have been a lot of pressure on Jaxon. How did he handle it?”

  Actually, it didn’t seem to bother him at all. He just went back to the party. Remember, the Regulators know how to party.

  Shortly after the President left, the massive crowd began to thin out. They had come to honor the General, and perhaps shake the hand of the man that saved their son or daughter. Some of them just wanted to wish him well. Everyone gave him words of encouragement. All of them were very kind. After enough backs were patted and kind words shared many of them departed.

  Around one or two in the morning, the remaining partiers had moved back into the hall, along with the band, which were at this point taking requests, and having just as much fun as everyone else.

  “How many people would you estimate were still there?”

  I guess there were probably one hundred and fifty to two hundred people left. We were having a good night. I remember dancing with Jax. I was glad to be inside finally, the night had gotten a bit too chilly for the heating lamps. I was looking up at him, and he was smiling at me.

  It was nice.

  I can’t remember how much I drank but I do remember snorting wine out of my nose when the band began playing “Drops of Jupiter”, and Javie launched from his seat, ran across the dance floor, and jumped on the stage. A brief struggle with the singer over the microphone, and the next thing we knew he was the bands new lead vocal. Too bad he never had singing lessons but no one seemed to mind. In fact, we all began to sing along. Javie took that as a sign of encouragement and proceeded to rip off his own shirt, exposing his very hairy chest.

  “Redheads only,” Javie announced through the microphone when all the girls began to scream for him.

  Eventually, most of the team ended up on stage. Jaxon stayed with me. I was holding him tightly as
we danced to Javie’s horrible singing. It was the most fun I’d had in a very long time.

  There was a girl next to me who was yelling and raising her arms in the air. I think she was trying to get Dudley’s attention. The bullet ripped through the back of her head, exploding brain matter and a red spray all over my dress.

  I looked down at the mess. I saw and felt the wet stickiness on my skin. I just couldn’t understand what was happening. Jaxon was barely touched by the spray. He had no idea what had just happened.

  I stiffened in his arms. I tried to say something. I tried to form words but I couldn’t. My mouth kept making a gurgling sound, and no words would come forth. Jax pulled away from me gently. He looked down at the splatter of blood and brains on my dress. Confusion twisted his features. Then his eyes went wide, and he began to roughly check me for damage.

  This all happened in the span of seconds. At least, I’m thinking it was just seconds. We were all very drunk. Still, I was frightened. I mean, I’ve seen violence before. I was there when my husband battled the undead on the border of El Paso and New Mexico. I was there when he fought the former Guardian. It’s just that, I don’t know, maybe I sometimes have trouble processing the ugliness of the world. That poor girl died so horribly.

  More gunshots followed.

  I heard a rapid succession of cracking thumps that overpowered the music and forced everyone to scatter about the room. Jaxon was already moving before any of that though. He was holding my head down and dragging me away from the crowd of people back towards the heavy tables.

  He flipped the very first table we came to on its side, breaking the glasses and plates still upon its surface all over the floor. I watched him pull his knife from his pocket. The blade made an audible click as he snapped it into place.

  A masked gunman dressed all in black came around the corner of the table, and fired his rifle at us. A burst of red came from the side of Jaxon’s bicep, but he somehow crossed the distance between them and plunged his blade into the murderer’s throat.

  He stabbed him in the neck several times.

  The room was in complete and utter chaos. People were running and screaming. The sound of gunshots reverberated inside the room so loudly I couldn’t gather my thoughts. Jaxon was calm.

  “The doors are locked,” he said as he looked around the room. “There are fifteen more gunman and we’re trapped in here with them.”

  Suddenly, Ivana was crouching down next to me and behind her was Georgie.

  “What the Hell is going on?” Georgie asked.

  More and more bodies were falling to the ground as the killers advanced across the room.

  “You protect them!” Jaxon shouted. “You keep them safe.”

  He gave Georgie the gun that belonged to the man he just killed. Georgie checked out the weapon. He made sure it would fire when he pulled the trigger, and he positioned himself in front of us.

  Jaxon grabbed my face, and made me look at him.

  “I won’t let them hurt you,” he said. “I won’t let them get anywhere near you.”

  I nodded that I understood, and my husband went into action. Georgie fired careful bursts of bullets at the approaching gunmen. They, in turn, fired back at him.

  “Skie!” Georgie shouted. “Check his body for more ammo.”

  I heard him. I heard him very clearly but I was unable to move. That’s how frightened I was. I couldn’t control my own body, and I was afraid that if I did start to move I’d start running even though I had nowhere to go.

  Across the room I saw a crowd of people trying to get out through a locked door. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just break it down. I watched as a gunman approached within twenty feet of them and began to slowly shoot them down one after another.

  I moved.

  I crawled to the body. I frantically searched through all his military gear until I found the ammunition Georgie needed. I scooped up five magazines and crawled back to him.

  I didn’t want to look back towards the crowd of people at the locked door, but I couldn’t help myself. There were now two gunmen shooting at the screaming group of people. Jaxon and Nick came out of nowhere. They just sort of appeared out of the chaos. They each came up behind a shooter and slit their throats.

  Nick grabbed a rifle and vanished. Jaxon picked up the other weapon, fired two shots into an advancing shooter, and tossed the gun to Javie who had also just appeared out of thin air.

  Then I understood. People were running around everywhere. They were crisscrossing the room over and over again in an attempt to avoid the gunmen. The crowd was so thick that the team easily got lost among them.

  I watched Jaxon pick up a chair and hurl it across the room. I saw a shooter drop to the ground upon impact, and then I saw Dudley jump upon the man’s back as he attempted to rise. Dudley plunged his knife into the killer’s ear over and over again.

  It was horrible. We were all having so much fun. We were all enjoying a bit of what life used to be like before Jaxon became the Guardian. Somehow, the ugliness and violence of his new life had found us.

  There was blood on the floor. I watched as people began to slip and slide. I saw a wounded young woman by the stage. She had a white dress that was covered in blood. She was calling for help. She was reaching out to the frantic people running all around her. Nobody would stop and help.

  I wanted to go to her. I wanted to save her. I waited until I saw that Georgie was shooting again, and I got my feet under me so that I could run to the stage. The young girl was dead when I looked back at her. I had only taken my eyes off of her for a brief moment. Just a brief moment and she died. Half her face was lying in a pool of blood. Her eyes were staring blankly away from her, waiting for help that would never arrive.

  “Why couldn’t she wait for me,” I cried. “Why couldn’t she just wait a few more seconds?”

  Ivana grabbed a hold of me. Apparently, I had stood up, and she was dragging me back down.

  “Why did she have to die alone?” I asked.

  “Sweetheart,” Ivana cried out. “Get ahold of yourself. We need to stay under cover.”

  She was holding me down. I could feel her straining against me as I attempted to push myself up. I don’t know what I was planning on doing. I don’t know where I was going to go. I just wanted to help someone. I couldn’t stand to see so much suffering.

  “Why are they doing this?” I cried out. “They aren’t even monsters. They’re humans. Why are they doing this?”

  Ivana was yanked away from me. Another killer dressed in black had appeared. He slammed his pistol into the side of her head, and she dropped to the floor like a ragdoll. He then turned his pistol on me.

  I knew I was going to die. I just wasn’t sure what my reaction should be. I was crying but I had been crying for a while at that point. I didn’t know what to do. So I ended up just looking into the man’s eyes. I saw nothing there. Maybe it was the ski mask hiding his face. I don’t know, but I couldn’t find any humanity.

  I closed my eyes.

  Three gunshots joined in on the cacophony of the room. I noticed them because they were so close to my ear. I opened my eyes and realized that I hadn’t been shot. The gunman had.

  Georgie had finally noticed what was going on right behind him. Not that it was his fault, mind you. He had been busy fighting multiple gunmen in the other direction. Until the very last moment he had no idea that one of them had snuck up behind him.

  “Thank you,” I told Georgie.

  “No problem,” Georgie replied just before he arched his back wickedly and collapsed to the floor.

  He’d been shot in the back. I watched as he frantically thrashed against the floor while reaching behind his back as if he could stop the pain of the wound with his hands. It wasn’t very long of a struggle, and slowly Georgie became quite still except for the involuntary twitching in his legs.

  His eyes remained fixed upon his fallen rifle.

  Our attackers must have realized that t
hey finally shot him. Two of the men began to move closer to us. I reacted. I dove forward, gathered up Georgie’s weapon and pulled the trigger just as the two killers came around the table.

  I killed two men.

  Ivana was screaming behind me. She was trying to help Georgie. Poor, poor Georgie who had been so brave, now just a limp mass in a pool of blood. Ivana had her hands over his wound. She was trying to prevent the pool from growing.

  She was also yelling something at me. I couldn’t focus on her words. I couldn’t stop staring at the two bodies in front of me. I was barely paying any attention to Ivana. Georgie was going to die. Perhaps he was dead already. Ivana just kept yelling at me.

  Someone punched me in the chest.

  At least that’s what it felt like. Everything sort of slowed down as I fell straight back onto my butt. All the noise in the room sort of became a loud throb, and I finally understood what Ivana had been yelling. She wanted me to get down. In my shock, I was standing straight up in a room full of gunfire.

  I wanted to laugh. I wanted to tell her that I was fine; I had just lost my breath for a moment. When I tried to turn in her direction, I lost control of the upper half of my body. She screamed as I finished the remainder of my fall and landed with my head upon Georgie’s shoulder.

  There was a small rosebud in the center of my chest. It was odd that a beautiful rosebud ended up right where I had been punched. My legs wouldn’t move, neither would my arms. The room had grown terribly cold, and the rosebud began to blossom and spread.

  The last thing I remember seeing was Ivana’s face above mine. She was crying. She was screaming. I felt her hands pressing down upon my chest and then I was gone.

  Chapter 5

  Jaxon

  There was a moment after I had told Jaxon about my meeting with Skie in which I was truly afraid. It was the way in which his eyes narrowed, and his lip curled. He seemed a man very capable of committing unspeakable acts against anyone foolish enough to harm his loved ones.

  And then, just as quickly as the rage appeared on his face, it was gone.